Mr. and Mrs. Bill (W. J.) Jones interview

Interview with Mr. and Mrs. Bill (W. J.) Jones
Recorded by Kathryn Tucker Windham. June 24, 1980; Oak Hill, Alabama.
Transcript prepared by Edna O. Meek and Yolanda Valentin.
Begin Side 1, Tape 1
K. T. Windham What is your first recollection of Gee’s Bend, the first time you ever went down there?
Mr. Jones I think it was back in 1930. Anne Ervin was a sort of welfare director, and she had…..
Mrs. Jones An attendance officer.
Mr. Jones An attendance officer. She had an office in the superintendent’s office, so Joyce and I went with Ann a good little bit, and I remember the first trip over there. The school was sort of a church affair, you know, and…..
Mrs. Jones And the church wasn’t very attractive. It was just a negro country church.
K. T. Windham Board, plank church?
Mrs. Jones Uh, huh. Yes.
K. T. Windham It wasn’t logs, was it?
Mrs. Jones No.
Mr. Jones They were just devastated. Mr. E. O. Rentz was a merchant there in Camden, and I reckon he must have rented this land from the owners. But he just cleaned those people out.
Mrs. Jones They were not able to come up with the rent for a year or two.
Mr. Jones And just….I think the whole town noticed, in the fall, just wagon after wagon, carrying everything those people had. Even their chickens, and their corn. He just took anything and everything of value. They were just destitute.
Just wagon after wagon. I don’t know how he disposed of that stuff. Somewhere there in Camden. But I don’t see how he could have gotten very much out of it. K. T. Windham He also took their farm implements, I believe, didn’t he.
Mrs. Jones Plows, hoes, axes, cows, everything.
Mr. Jones They were just on the verge of starvation. You tell her about the……
Mrs. Jones Some way Ann Ervin knew about it. Everybody was disturbed over, as Bill says, the procession coming through town from the ferry, you know.
K. T. Windham I was going to ask how they came.
Mrs. Jones They came across the ferry. And, so we went over there late one afternoon, and it was the most perfect example of grapevine telegraphy that I ever heard of. I had always heard of how the grapevine works. We got over there and ……
K. T. Windham Did you go by ferry, too?
Mrs. Jones Crossed the ferry and went over. So when we got over there, we asked direction to a certain man’s house. He was one of the head men. One of the Pettways.
Mr. Jones I’ve forgotten his first name.
K. T. Windham Little.
Mr. Jones Little Pettway. Little Pettway.
Mrs. Jones And so when we drove up to his house, Bill and Anne were talking to him, and said we had heard what bad shape they were in over there, and came over to see if something could be done, and how it could be done to help them.
So, I was sitting in the car and listening, and over this way you’d see two or three people coming; over this way across the fields you’d see two or three people coming; all the way around, in a circle around that man’s house, those people came, and they stood around the car. Somebody was coming to help, and it was the mot pitiful….well, I couldn’t sleep that night. None of us, neither of the three of us could go to sleep. Well, when we….they invited us to their homes, some of them and….
Mr. Jones they gathered around us there. Mrs. Jones Yeah, and talked and told what a terrible fix they were in. And this one would say they just had a handful of meal; and this one would say he had that much meal left. And I remember going in one woman’s house, and it was just spotlessly clean, and she showed us a quarter of a hog jowl; somebody had killed a hog and had given her a quarter of a jowl. And she showed us a little container with this much salt in it, and then she showed us, in the bottom of something, about that much meal, about two inches of meal, and she said, “This is every bite I’ve got to eat.”
We went to other places and they showed us some little more in some of the places. And one place…Bill and I’ve been talking about it, since we knew you were coming���������������.stretched out on a table was a carcass. It looked like it might have been about that long. Had a long tail, and when we were coming home, we were just so heartsick and so horrified about it, Anne says, “I’m just as sure that was a dog as I can be.” They were literally starving.
Mr. Jones Took all their corn, and everything. Didn’t leave them anything.
Mrs. Jones And he was supposed to be a good man. But that happened. And the Smith brothers, and Mr. DeGraffenreid, that the place belonged to, lived in Tuscaloosa. It was an absentee landlord, and…
K. T. Windham VandeGraaff.
Mrs. Jones VandeGraaff, instead of DeGraffenreid. They would give them a little work around the place over there. They couldn’t afford…...
Mr. Jones They were not there to see it.
Mrs. Jones They were not there to see about it. And, occasionally, they would kill a beef, one of those men, and divide it out among them, and these people told us about how they gave them a little piece.
K. T. Windham Well, that one beef wouldn’t go far, would it?
Mrs. Jones No. Now, how many were over there, I don’t know, but thwy lived on berries and weed seed and all kinds of weeds. They’d just cook up any sort of mess out of anything they could pick up; but, as you said, it was winter time and they didn’t….And then when the WPA came along, they were so weak they just couldn’t hardly stand up. They didn’t have any strength to work. Mr. Jones But it wasn’t too long before the Red Cross came in. Mr. B. H. Matthews was chairman at that time, and I was kind of connected with it. Once or twice I did the soliciting for funds. He got some meal and meat and coffee and sugar….
Mrs. Jones they wanted coffee and sugar desperately.
Mr. Jones That tended to relieve it, but it was several months after.
Mrs. Jones It took a while to get that started, and it just looked like the government just never could get in there and get started on any public work and public assistance project. No matter how Bill and Anne and other people in town worked with it. But they finally came across, and then Gee’s Bend began to flourish.
Mr. Jones Anne would verify all of this.
K. T. Windham I had not thought about talking to her. In fact, I didn’t realize her role in this. I’d like to talk to her.
Mrs. Jones She worked out of the office as attendance officer. We rode together a lot.
Mr. Jones That was under the Bibb Graves administration. That first 1927 Minimum School Program Law, you had to have an attendance officer, to get that particular fund. And out of that grew the Health Service in Camden, and also the welfare office.
Mrs. Jones That was why her appointment as an attendance officer, under that Minimum School Program.
K. T. Windham Until that time they had not had an attendance officer? You just went if you wanted to?
Mrs. Jones Well, this little school in the church, it was pathetic. And then when they built the school…
K. T. Windham After the government came in?
Mrs. Jones The County Board of Education built the first building, didn’t they?
Mr. Jones No, the government built the first one. The government built a nice school, and a nice church over there.
K. T. Windham As a part of that project....that housing project? Mrs. Jones The County built the vocational building, as I remember, and I think the government helped build it; just all of a sudden when they came in, they did a lot of building. I think Robert (Pierce) was gone by then. I’ve forgotten who succeeded him.
Mrs. Jones He was in that new school building, because I remember going to programs in there.
K. T. Windham Yes, he said he opened that new school building, and I believe they had a nursery school over there, too. Miss Lula Palmer, from Montgomery, helped open that, didn’t she?
Mrs. Jones She came to the county for two years as a consultant for the Teacher’s Association. That was before she got connected with the school.
Mr. Jones She was connected with the Department of Education. She was a very close friend of ours.
K. T. Windham She’s a fine person. I have talked to her, too.
Mrs. Jones Well, you know, her Father was president of Montevallo, and she has real close connections over here at Furman.
Mr. Jones He was born and reared over there.
Mrs. Jones Dr. T. W.
K. T. Windham She sent me to see Robert Pierce. She worked with him in setting up that school, in some way.
Mr. Jones I bet Robert was please to be interviewed.
K. T. Windham He was very pleased. He’s a busy gentleman, though. It’s hard to catch him. He serves on numerous committees and advisory boards.
Mr. Jones He told me about it. I don’t think any of them are paying him too much.
K. T. Windham His wife was complaining about that. I don’t think they pay him too much.
Well, now, this school that was in the church, it was a one teacher school, wasn’t it? Mr. Jones I think it was. I think maybe they just taught all the grades….
K. T. Windham In one room?
Mrs. Jones All mixed up.
K. T. Windham On the church pews?
Mr. Jones On the church pews. I believe the building��� they tore that down to build the government building.
K. T. Windham Right where the present school is, right near there?
Mr. Jones Not on the site, but near it.
K. T. Windham And how did those houses look down there then?
Mr. Jones They were just negro cabins.
Mrs. Jones One room. Some of them had little shed rooms at the back.
Mr. Jones Not well kept at all.
Mrs. Jones Cans all over the yard.
Mr. Jones Victims of absentee landlords. I think they were interested in them, but just didn’t know what was going on.
Mrs. Jones And there was that pretty old house over there that belonged to the original people…
K. T. Windham The Pettways. And it was still there? I wish I had seen that house.
Mr. Jones It was pretty. I have seen it any number of times.
Mrs. Jones It was originally a white house, but it was weather-beaten and gray.
Mr. Jones But it wasn’t right down in the Bend there. It was nearer up toward Alberta.
Mrs. Jones It was a real pretty location. It was just a pretty drive from the highway out to Gee’s Bend, out from Alberta.
Mr. Jones They moved up to Huntsville, I think, didn’t they? K. T. Windham I think so. It was a two story house, was it?
Mrs. Jones As I remember, it was.
K. T. Windham Is that the house they called Sandy Hill?
Mr. Jones I’m not sure about it. We never went in it.
Mrs. Jones It looked to me like a story and a half house.
K. T. Windham Just a substantial country farm house?
Well, when that new school stared down there, were you responsible for getting the principal for the new school? How did you get him?
Mr. Jones I think so. I think it was under the Board of Education. I reckon Robert was there when I was first appointed, in ’23. Maybe not.
Mrs. Jones No, he wasn’t there.
K. T. Windham I think he came in with that new school. I think that’s what he told me.
Mr. Jones Well, if they had any earlier negro principals, none of them were too outstanding until Robert came along, and Robert was really interested.
Mrs. Jones He was interested in all the various aspects of life over there.
Mr. Jones Robert is what they used to call a white man’s negro.
K. T. Windham That’s what he told me.
Mrs. Jones They had a vocational teacher over there that was one of the most interesting people. His name was Brown. What was his first name?
Mr. Jones Dillard.
K. T. Windham He’s still there?
Mrs. Jones And Dillard was afraid he was going to have to go in the service, and he came by the office, and he said to Laura Dale McNeil, one of the secretaries, he said, “I got another exemption.” She said “Sure enough, Dillard?” He said, “Sure have, and give me time ‘til next year, and I’ll have another one.”
Mr. Jones Had twins, didn’t he?
Mrs. Jones Yeah, had twins. He was real proud one time, had twins.
Mr. Jones Mary, his wife, used to nurse for Dr. Paul.
K. T. Windham Oh, then Dr. Paul ran that clinic over there, too, didn’t he?
Mrs. Jones Yeah.
K. T. Windham I wonder if any of those records of that clinic are still available.
Mr. Jones I don��t know.
Mrs. Jones I think that maybe Annie Laurie Martin, who was one of Paul’s nurses….
Mr. Jones Paul was pretty good about keeping records.
K. T. Windham And I think that would have interested him, too, that project over there. Annie Laurie Martin?
Mr. Jones She lives out from Camden, out there where Carl Watts used to live.
K. T. Windham Well, I imagine she went with him over to Gee’s Bend.
Mrs. Jones I’m sure she did. I tell you somebody else might know something about those records, is Ellen Vernon Jones, who lives there.
K. T. Windham Now, who is she?
Mrs. Jones She was a cousin of Dr. Paul’s, and she was his receptionist.
Mr. Jones She was with him for years and years.
Mrs. Jones And Annie Laurie was, too.
K. T. Windham I would like very much to find some of those records.
Mrs. Jones You know, when you’re doing something like this, you never know….I do a lot of hand work and my embroidery thread gets all mixed up like this. It’s right interesting; I never know when I pull out a piece whether it�����s going to be two inches long or yards long. But when you’re doing something, I guess you get some little something somewhere that may open up two or three pages.
K. T. Windham That’s true. That’s why I’m so eager to talk to everybody who had any connection. But I had the most frustrating experience with this. During the 1930’s, Dr. Olive Stone, who was in Montgomery at one time, Dean of Women at Huntington College, came and spent the summer at Gee’s Bend; wrote about it; did recordings of their church services; their singing, their homecomings, every one of them. And all of that material has disappeared.
Mrs. Jones For mercy sake!
Mr. Jones Are his people living?
K. T. Windham It’s a woman, and, yes, she died only two years ago. She went off from there to Chapel Hill and got her Ph. D., and was on the faculty at the University of California at Los Angeles. And after she went out there, she took a sabbatical one summer and came back to Gee’s Bend, so she spent two full summers at Gee��s Bend. And nothing….
Mrs. Jones Well, you know, it seems to me that I remember Camden people talking about a white woman living over at Gee’s Bend and doing all that….
K. T. Windham That’s right, during the 1930’s. As I said, she died about two years ago. Her sister is living in Los Angeles. I called her sister and have talked to her and she said, “Oh, when Olive died, I just gave all her stuff away.” And she doesn’t know to whom she gave it or where it went. Isn’t that a tragedy?
And the older people at Gee’s Bend talk of her with such affection and say, “Oh, yes’m, she called everybody in and we sat here on the porch and she caught our voices:….you know, recorded the singing there. And the older preachers say, “Oh, yes. She used to always be welcome at my church on Sundays, and we’d sing for her.: And to think that it’s all gone. And that’s something that would be so valuable here.
Mrs. Jones Well, they were just typical��some of them were scared to death. Never had seen a doctor, I suppose. Some of them were just eager to get to him. Little children with their hair plaited in the pigtails, coming from every direction. It was interesting. K. T. Windham And Dr. Jones was the ideal person to do that, wasn’t he?
Mrs. Jones He’d cuss them, and be so kind to them.
Mr. Jones Paul would drive his car to the ferry, go on the ferry and they’d meet him there. He said he had ridden everything from a goat to a mule.
K. T. Windham From the ferry on into Gee’s Bend?
Mrs. Jones Goats, and mules and every sort of thing.
K. T. Windham Did you have any sort of ceremony down there when that school was dedicated, or do you know? Do you recall any kind of….they are such big ones on ceremony, I just wondered.
Mrs. Jones I don’t remember.
(Bill’s brother, Joel Jones, appears and is introduced.)
K. T. Windham Dr. Pierce also talked to me about starting May Day celebrations? Now, did you ever go to one of them?
Mrs. Jones The danced the May Pole, and did it beautifully.
Mr. Jones I remember going to one or two of those.
Mrs. Jones And talks and singings, and Robert resplendent in his wife….
K. T. Windham White linen suit?
Mr. Jones Each streamer was different colors.
K. T. Windham Around the Maypole?
Mrs. Jones And always served a good lunch.
K. T. Windham Well, he prided himself on that May Day celebration, and I believe he said they had athletic events, too; races.
Mr. Jones Oh, yes, they had a Field Day. After a while, they got school buses. They still continued that, you know, and the school buses would bring them back in so they would have bigger crowds. However, they’d all get there, ‘cause they were living around close. K. T. Windham They were all in walking distance of the school, weren’t they, at Gee’s Bend? They didn’t need any school buses right there, I don’t guess.
Mr. Jones But after the school buses, I think they transported them from Alberta and different places.
K. T. Windham And did you ever go to any of their Christmas programs?
Mr. Jones I don’t remember going.
Mrs. Jones I don’t remember going to a Christmas program.
Mr. Jones It was quite a journey to Gee’s Bend, crossing the ferry.
Mrs. Jones And in the wintertime, the road from the river up to the top was bad.
K. T. Windham There was a steep incline down to the ferry. Do you remember anything about that ferry man?
Mr. Jones I just remember him, that’s all. There was a young man there, the last time I went there. Joel has been there several times. Bertha Lee was attendance officer; they’d go over there about once a month didn’t you?
Joel Jones About every two weeks, at least every two weeks; maybe every week.
K. T. Windham Well, I heard them talk about an older ferryman who was dead, and they called him Deef Doc. Did ever hear about Deef Doc?
Mrs. Jones No, but I imagine we crossed with Deef Doc, because we started crossing over there in 1923. Bill was appointed superintendent in the spring of ���23 and he was there forty-two years. Joel and Bertha Lee went the last few years he was in office.
Bertha Lee served as attendance officer.
K. T. Windham The job that Mrs. Erwin started? Well, was there any difficulty in getting those children to go to school over there?
Mrs. Jones I don’t remember any great problem there.
Joel Jones It was better than some of the other schools. Annie Manie, for instance. Mr. Jones Over there around Furman, there were problems, weren’t they?
Joel Jones Oh, yeah. I reckon around Snow Hill and Furman, I reckon that was the worst.
K. T. Windham But at Gee’s Bend, they apparently wanted to go to school?
Joel Jones Well, they weren’t crazy about it.
Mr. Jones Later on , they had a lunch room over there. That was when J. E. Hobbs was principal. They had a nice lunch room there.
K. T. Windham Now, let’s see. He was in Camden ‘til….is he still there?
Mr. Jones He just retired.
K. T. Windham Does he live in Camden, or do you know?
Mr. Jones I tell you, Hobbs was a shrewd business man for a colored man. I think he owns a lot of that property around there. The government just might’ near gave it to him. He took advantage of all of that, and Robert wouldn’t. Robert was more interested in getting what he could out of it.
K. T. Windham I think Robert seemed sincerely interested in the people there. He wants to have a reunion down there. Everybody who was in on that early project down there. I think it might be interesting to have.
Joel Jones I expect the vocational teachers down there would be interested.
Mr. Jones Dillard Brown. She talked to him.
Joel Jones He could tell her more about it. He taught there several years.
K. T. Windham I believe he came in after that project had been built.
Mr. Jones He came in a little after.
K. T. Windham Do you remember it before the government project came in?
Joel Jones I remember when there wasn’t no place there at all. They used to meet the ferry down there, come down there to get their rations. K. T. Windham They tell some strange tales of things that have happened at Gee��s Bend.
Mrs. Jones You should be able to find some ghost stories down there.
K. T. Windham Should be. They tell all sorts of tales, but I think that first Gee, Joseph Gee, came in there…Well, I found him on the 1817 census. The story is that he married an Indian Princess down there. Took her back to South Carolina, and his family would have nothing to do with her, so he severed all ties with his family. But when he died, he apparently had done something with her. She is not listed as a survivor. He was a bachelor, so…..
(End Side 1, Tape 1)

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Holding.Institution

Birmingham Public Library (Alabama)

Full Text

Interview with Mr. and Mrs. Bill (W. J.) Jones
Recorded by Kathryn Tucker Windham. June 24, 1980; Oak Hill, Alabama.
Transcript prepared by Edna O. Meek and Yolanda Valentin.
Begin Side 1, Tape 1
K. T. Windham What is your first recollection of Gee’s Bend, the first time you ever went down there?
Mr. Jones I think it was back in 1930. Anne Ervin was a sort of welfare director, and she had…..
Mrs. Jones An attendance officer.
Mr. Jones An attendance officer. She had an office in the superintendent’s office, so Joyce and I went with Ann a good little bit, and I remember the first trip over there. The school was sort of a church affair, you know, and…..
Mrs. Jones And the church wasn’t very attractive. It was just a negro country church.
K. T. Windham Board, plank church?
Mrs. Jones Uh, huh. Yes.
K. T. Windham It wasn’t logs, was it?
Mrs. Jones No.
Mr. Jones They were just devastated. Mr. E. O. Rentz was a merchant there in Camden, and I reckon he must have rented this land from the owners. But he just cleaned those people out.
Mrs. Jones They were not able to come up with the rent for a year or two.
Mr. Jones And just….I think the whole town noticed, in the fall, just wagon after wagon, carrying everything those people had. Even their chickens, and their corn. He just took anything and everything of value. They were just destitute.
Just wagon after wagon. I don’t know how he disposed of that stuff. Somewhere there in Camden. But I don’t see how he could have gotten very much out of it. K. T. Windham He also took their farm implements, I believe, didn’t he.
Mrs. Jones Plows, hoes, axes, cows, everything.
Mr. Jones They were just on the verge of starvation. You tell her about the……
Mrs. Jones Some way Ann Ervin knew about it. Everybody was disturbed over, as Bill says, the procession coming through town from the ferry, you know.
K. T. Windham I was going to ask how they came.
Mrs. Jones They came across the ferry. And, so we went over there late one afternoon, and it was the most perfect example of grapevine telegraphy that I ever heard of. I had always heard of how the grapevine works. We got over there and ……
K. T. Windham Did you go by ferry, too?
Mrs. Jones Crossed the ferry and went over. So when we got over there, we asked direction to a certain man’s house. He was one of the head men. One of the Pettways.
Mr. Jones I’ve forgotten his first name.
K. T. Windham Little.
Mr. Jones Little Pettway. Little Pettway.
Mrs. Jones And so when we drove up to his house, Bill and Anne were talking to him, and said we had heard what bad shape they were in over there, and came over to see if something could be done, and how it could be done to help them.
So, I was sitting in the car and listening, and over this way you’d see two or three people coming; over this way across the fields you’d see two or three people coming; all the way around, in a circle around that man’s house, those people came, and they stood around the car. Somebody was coming to help, and it was the mot pitiful….well, I couldn’t sleep that night. None of us, neither of the three of us could go to sleep. Well, when we….they invited us to their homes, some of them and….
Mr. Jones they gathered around us there. Mrs. Jones Yeah, and talked and told what a terrible fix they were in. And this one would say they just had a handful of meal; and this one would say he had that much meal left. And I remember going in one woman’s house, and it was just spotlessly clean, and she showed us a quarter of a hog jowl; somebody had killed a hog and had given her a quarter of a jowl. And she showed us a little container with this much salt in it, and then she showed us, in the bottom of something, about that much meal, about two inches of meal, and she said, “This is every bite I’ve got to eat.”
We went to other places and they showed us some little more in some of the places. And one place…Bill and I’ve been talking about it, since we knew you were coming���������������.stretched out on a table was a carcass. It looked like it might have been about that long. Had a long tail, and when we were coming home, we were just so heartsick and so horrified about it, Anne says, “I’m just as sure that was a dog as I can be.” They were literally starving.
Mr. Jones Took all their corn, and everything. Didn’t leave them anything.
Mrs. Jones And he was supposed to be a good man. But that happened. And the Smith brothers, and Mr. DeGraffenreid, that the place belonged to, lived in Tuscaloosa. It was an absentee landlord, and…
K. T. Windham VandeGraaff.
Mrs. Jones VandeGraaff, instead of DeGraffenreid. They would give them a little work around the place over there. They couldn’t afford…...
Mr. Jones They were not there to see it.
Mrs. Jones They were not there to see about it. And, occasionally, they would kill a beef, one of those men, and divide it out among them, and these people told us about how they gave them a little piece.
K. T. Windham Well, that one beef wouldn’t go far, would it?
Mrs. Jones No. Now, how many were over there, I don’t know, but thwy lived on berries and weed seed and all kinds of weeds. They’d just cook up any sort of mess out of anything they could pick up; but, as you said, it was winter time and they didn’t….And then when the WPA came along, they were so weak they just couldn’t hardly stand up. They didn’t have any strength to work. Mr. Jones But it wasn’t too long before the Red Cross came in. Mr. B. H. Matthews was chairman at that time, and I was kind of connected with it. Once or twice I did the soliciting for funds. He got some meal and meat and coffee and sugar….
Mrs. Jones they wanted coffee and sugar desperately.
Mr. Jones That tended to relieve it, but it was several months after.
Mrs. Jones It took a while to get that started, and it just looked like the government just never could get in there and get started on any public work and public assistance project. No matter how Bill and Anne and other people in town worked with it. But they finally came across, and then Gee’s Bend began to flourish.
Mr. Jones Anne would verify all of this.
K. T. Windham I had not thought about talking to her. In fact, I didn’t realize her role in this. I’d like to talk to her.
Mrs. Jones She worked out of the office as attendance officer. We rode together a lot.
Mr. Jones That was under the Bibb Graves administration. That first 1927 Minimum School Program Law, you had to have an attendance officer, to get that particular fund. And out of that grew the Health Service in Camden, and also the welfare office.
Mrs. Jones That was why her appointment as an attendance officer, under that Minimum School Program.
K. T. Windham Until that time they had not had an attendance officer? You just went if you wanted to?
Mrs. Jones Well, this little school in the church, it was pathetic. And then when they built the school…
K. T. Windham After the government came in?
Mrs. Jones The County Board of Education built the first building, didn’t they?
Mr. Jones No, the government built the first one. The government built a nice school, and a nice church over there.
K. T. Windham As a part of that project....that housing project? Mrs. Jones The County built the vocational building, as I remember, and I think the government helped build it; just all of a sudden when they came in, they did a lot of building. I think Robert (Pierce) was gone by then. I’ve forgotten who succeeded him.
Mrs. Jones He was in that new school building, because I remember going to programs in there.
K. T. Windham Yes, he said he opened that new school building, and I believe they had a nursery school over there, too. Miss Lula Palmer, from Montgomery, helped open that, didn’t she?
Mrs. Jones She came to the county for two years as a consultant for the Teacher’s Association. That was before she got connected with the school.
Mr. Jones She was connected with the Department of Education. She was a very close friend of ours.
K. T. Windham She’s a fine person. I have talked to her, too.
Mrs. Jones Well, you know, her Father was president of Montevallo, and she has real close connections over here at Furman.
Mr. Jones He was born and reared over there.
Mrs. Jones Dr. T. W.
K. T. Windham She sent me to see Robert Pierce. She worked with him in setting up that school, in some way.
Mr. Jones I bet Robert was please to be interviewed.
K. T. Windham He was very pleased. He’s a busy gentleman, though. It’s hard to catch him. He serves on numerous committees and advisory boards.
Mr. Jones He told me about it. I don’t think any of them are paying him too much.
K. T. Windham His wife was complaining about that. I don’t think they pay him too much.
Well, now, this school that was in the church, it was a one teacher school, wasn’t it? Mr. Jones I think it was. I think maybe they just taught all the grades….
K. T. Windham In one room?
Mrs. Jones All mixed up.
K. T. Windham On the church pews?
Mr. Jones On the church pews. I believe the building��� they tore that down to build the government building.
K. T. Windham Right where the present school is, right near there?
Mr. Jones Not on the site, but near it.
K. T. Windham And how did those houses look down there then?
Mr. Jones They were just negro cabins.
Mrs. Jones One room. Some of them had little shed rooms at the back.
Mr. Jones Not well kept at all.
Mrs. Jones Cans all over the yard.
Mr. Jones Victims of absentee landlords. I think they were interested in them, but just didn’t know what was going on.
Mrs. Jones And there was that pretty old house over there that belonged to the original people…
K. T. Windham The Pettways. And it was still there? I wish I had seen that house.
Mr. Jones It was pretty. I have seen it any number of times.
Mrs. Jones It was originally a white house, but it was weather-beaten and gray.
Mr. Jones But it wasn’t right down in the Bend there. It was nearer up toward Alberta.
Mrs. Jones It was a real pretty location. It was just a pretty drive from the highway out to Gee’s Bend, out from Alberta.
Mr. Jones They moved up to Huntsville, I think, didn’t they? K. T. Windham I think so. It was a two story house, was it?
Mrs. Jones As I remember, it was.
K. T. Windham Is that the house they called Sandy Hill?
Mr. Jones I’m not sure about it. We never went in it.
Mrs. Jones It looked to me like a story and a half house.
K. T. Windham Just a substantial country farm house?
Well, when that new school stared down there, were you responsible for getting the principal for the new school? How did you get him?
Mr. Jones I think so. I think it was under the Board of Education. I reckon Robert was there when I was first appointed, in ’23. Maybe not.
Mrs. Jones No, he wasn’t there.
K. T. Windham I think he came in with that new school. I think that’s what he told me.
Mr. Jones Well, if they had any earlier negro principals, none of them were too outstanding until Robert came along, and Robert was really interested.
Mrs. Jones He was interested in all the various aspects of life over there.
Mr. Jones Robert is what they used to call a white man’s negro.
K. T. Windham That’s what he told me.
Mrs. Jones They had a vocational teacher over there that was one of the most interesting people. His name was Brown. What was his first name?
Mr. Jones Dillard.
K. T. Windham He’s still there?
Mrs. Jones And Dillard was afraid he was going to have to go in the service, and he came by the office, and he said to Laura Dale McNeil, one of the secretaries, he said, “I got another exemption.” She said “Sure enough, Dillard?” He said, “Sure have, and give me time ‘til next year, and I’ll have another one.”
Mr. Jones Had twins, didn’t he?
Mrs. Jones Yeah, had twins. He was real proud one time, had twins.
Mr. Jones Mary, his wife, used to nurse for Dr. Paul.
K. T. Windham Oh, then Dr. Paul ran that clinic over there, too, didn’t he?
Mrs. Jones Yeah.
K. T. Windham I wonder if any of those records of that clinic are still available.
Mr. Jones I don��t know.
Mrs. Jones I think that maybe Annie Laurie Martin, who was one of Paul’s nurses….
Mr. Jones Paul was pretty good about keeping records.
K. T. Windham And I think that would have interested him, too, that project over there. Annie Laurie Martin?
Mr. Jones She lives out from Camden, out there where Carl Watts used to live.
K. T. Windham Well, I imagine she went with him over to Gee’s Bend.
Mrs. Jones I’m sure she did. I tell you somebody else might know something about those records, is Ellen Vernon Jones, who lives there.
K. T. Windham Now, who is she?
Mrs. Jones She was a cousin of Dr. Paul’s, and she was his receptionist.
Mr. Jones She was with him for years and years.
Mrs. Jones And Annie Laurie was, too.
K. T. Windham I would like very much to find some of those records.
Mrs. Jones You know, when you’re doing something like this, you never know….I do a lot of hand work and my embroidery thread gets all mixed up like this. It’s right interesting; I never know when I pull out a piece whether it�����s going to be two inches long or yards long. But when you’re doing something, I guess you get some little something somewhere that may open up two or three pages.
K. T. Windham That’s true. That’s why I’m so eager to talk to everybody who had any connection. But I had the most frustrating experience with this. During the 1930’s, Dr. Olive Stone, who was in Montgomery at one time, Dean of Women at Huntington College, came and spent the summer at Gee’s Bend; wrote about it; did recordings of their church services; their singing, their homecomings, every one of them. And all of that material has disappeared.
Mrs. Jones For mercy sake!
Mr. Jones Are his people living?
K. T. Windham It’s a woman, and, yes, she died only two years ago. She went off from there to Chapel Hill and got her Ph. D., and was on the faculty at the University of California at Los Angeles. And after she went out there, she took a sabbatical one summer and came back to Gee’s Bend, so she spent two full summers at Gee��s Bend. And nothing….
Mrs. Jones Well, you know, it seems to me that I remember Camden people talking about a white woman living over at Gee’s Bend and doing all that….
K. T. Windham That’s right, during the 1930’s. As I said, she died about two years ago. Her sister is living in Los Angeles. I called her sister and have talked to her and she said, “Oh, when Olive died, I just gave all her stuff away.” And she doesn’t know to whom she gave it or where it went. Isn’t that a tragedy?
And the older people at Gee’s Bend talk of her with such affection and say, “Oh, yes’m, she called everybody in and we sat here on the porch and she caught our voices:….you know, recorded the singing there. And the older preachers say, “Oh, yes. She used to always be welcome at my church on Sundays, and we’d sing for her.: And to think that it’s all gone. And that’s something that would be so valuable here.
Mrs. Jones Well, they were just typical��some of them were scared to death. Never had seen a doctor, I suppose. Some of them were just eager to get to him. Little children with their hair plaited in the pigtails, coming from every direction. It was interesting. K. T. Windham And Dr. Jones was the ideal person to do that, wasn’t he?
Mrs. Jones He’d cuss them, and be so kind to them.
Mr. Jones Paul would drive his car to the ferry, go on the ferry and they’d meet him there. He said he had ridden everything from a goat to a mule.
K. T. Windham From the ferry on into Gee’s Bend?
Mrs. Jones Goats, and mules and every sort of thing.
K. T. Windham Did you have any sort of ceremony down there when that school was dedicated, or do you know? Do you recall any kind of….they are such big ones on ceremony, I just wondered.
Mrs. Jones I don’t remember.
(Bill’s brother, Joel Jones, appears and is introduced.)
K. T. Windham Dr. Pierce also talked to me about starting May Day celebrations? Now, did you ever go to one of them?
Mrs. Jones The danced the May Pole, and did it beautifully.
Mr. Jones I remember going to one or two of those.
Mrs. Jones And talks and singings, and Robert resplendent in his wife….
K. T. Windham White linen suit?
Mr. Jones Each streamer was different colors.
K. T. Windham Around the Maypole?
Mrs. Jones And always served a good lunch.
K. T. Windham Well, he prided himself on that May Day celebration, and I believe he said they had athletic events, too; races.
Mr. Jones Oh, yes, they had a Field Day. After a while, they got school buses. They still continued that, you know, and the school buses would bring them back in so they would have bigger crowds. However, they’d all get there, ‘cause they were living around close. K. T. Windham They were all in walking distance of the school, weren’t they, at Gee’s Bend? They didn’t need any school buses right there, I don’t guess.
Mr. Jones But after the school buses, I think they transported them from Alberta and different places.
K. T. Windham And did you ever go to any of their Christmas programs?
Mr. Jones I don’t remember going.
Mrs. Jones I don’t remember going to a Christmas program.
Mr. Jones It was quite a journey to Gee’s Bend, crossing the ferry.
Mrs. Jones And in the wintertime, the road from the river up to the top was bad.
K. T. Windham There was a steep incline down to the ferry. Do you remember anything about that ferry man?
Mr. Jones I just remember him, that’s all. There was a young man there, the last time I went there. Joel has been there several times. Bertha Lee was attendance officer; they’d go over there about once a month didn’t you?
Joel Jones About every two weeks, at least every two weeks; maybe every week.
K. T. Windham Well, I heard them talk about an older ferryman who was dead, and they called him Deef Doc. Did ever hear about Deef Doc?
Mrs. Jones No, but I imagine we crossed with Deef Doc, because we started crossing over there in 1923. Bill was appointed superintendent in the spring of ���23 and he was there forty-two years. Joel and Bertha Lee went the last few years he was in office.
Bertha Lee served as attendance officer.
K. T. Windham The job that Mrs. Erwin started? Well, was there any difficulty in getting those children to go to school over there?
Mrs. Jones I don’t remember any great problem there.
Joel Jones It was better than some of the other schools. Annie Manie, for instance. Mr. Jones Over there around Furman, there were problems, weren’t they?
Joel Jones Oh, yeah. I reckon around Snow Hill and Furman, I reckon that was the worst.
K. T. Windham But at Gee’s Bend, they apparently wanted to go to school?
Joel Jones Well, they weren’t crazy about it.
Mr. Jones Later on , they had a lunch room over there. That was when J. E. Hobbs was principal. They had a nice lunch room there.
K. T. Windham Now, let’s see. He was in Camden ‘til….is he still there?
Mr. Jones He just retired.
K. T. Windham Does he live in Camden, or do you know?
Mr. Jones I tell you, Hobbs was a shrewd business man for a colored man. I think he owns a lot of that property around there. The government just might’ near gave it to him. He took advantage of all of that, and Robert wouldn’t. Robert was more interested in getting what he could out of it.
K. T. Windham I think Robert seemed sincerely interested in the people there. He wants to have a reunion down there. Everybody who was in on that early project down there. I think it might be interesting to have.
Joel Jones I expect the vocational teachers down there would be interested.
Mr. Jones Dillard Brown. She talked to him.
Joel Jones He could tell her more about it. He taught there several years.
K. T. Windham I believe he came in after that project had been built.
Mr. Jones He came in a little after.
K. T. Windham Do you remember it before the government project came in?
Joel Jones I remember when there wasn’t no place there at all. They used to meet the ferry down there, come down there to get their rations. K. T. Windham They tell some strange tales of things that have happened at Gee��s Bend.
Mrs. Jones You should be able to find some ghost stories down there.
K. T. Windham Should be. They tell all sorts of tales, but I think that first Gee, Joseph Gee, came in there…Well, I found him on the 1817 census. The story is that he married an Indian Princess down there. Took her back to South Carolina, and his family would have nothing to do with her, so he severed all ties with his family. But when he died, he apparently had done something with her. She is not listed as a survivor. He was a bachelor, so…..
(End Side 1, Tape 1)